


'cause I'm tethered to you now

by readeption



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, F/M, Post-Break Up, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-25 10:45:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12034272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readeption/pseuds/readeption
Summary: how can you tell me that you don’t love me like you did before?





	1. Chapter 1

_how can you tell me that you don't love me like you did before?_

_cause you want me, I can see by the way you hold the door_

_you don’t need me, so I sit myself back on the floor_

_and I wait there_

_cause I can’t go out no more_

_cause you don’t need me no more_

_you don’t love me no more_

_you don’t need me at all._

* * *

Vilkas tries to cheer him up.

‘You won’t die without her,’ he says, with a hand on Farkas’ knee. ‘There’s plenty more fish in the sea.’

‘None,’ says Farkas hoarsely. ‘None I’ll love so much.’ And then he has to leave because he’s crying again.

Vilkas comes to him in the morning and says, ‘Want to train? Work out some aggression?’

And for once, Farkas doesn’t _have_ any aggression. He just feels like someone’s reached inside him and torn half his insides out. There’s no room for it underneath the squashing, swamping sadness. Vilkas says, ‘Are you angry with her?’ and Farkas knows he should be, knows any other man would be, any other man who isn’t so desperately in love –

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m not angry with her.’

‘Come on,’ says Vilkas gently. ‘Not even a little?’

‘I just miss her,’ croaks Farkas. ‘I don’t even – I don’t even care why she left I just – I just want her back.’ And Vilkas, who doesn’t understand, goes.

He begins to dread seeing the others. He feels vaguely ashamed. He knows they have better things to do than pity him – he _wants_ to be pitied, he wants someone to feel what he feels, not _say_ anything but just – sit with him and feel it. But he manages to persuade himself that they’re all looking at him all of the time, talking about him all of the time. He starts going on walks between mealtimes, replacing his steel armour with loose cloth, because he knows the right place to cut in a wolf’s neck to drop it instantly and what else does a Whiterun man need?

He walks the road to the watchtower, then curves around Whiterun and its contiguous farms. The mountain flowers, the cotton and ferns all drift in the wind around him, the soil soft beneath his feet. It all feels different when the wind can blow against his skin, rather than skimming his armour. It feels like he’s part of nature, swept up in it. His walks – two a day – are snatched moments of peace uninterrupted by his own anxieties, because the plains are quiet – especially these days – and no one, he reminds himself, can tell exactly what he’s thinking just by watching him move from half a mile away.

It’s somewhat superficial, however. His life becomes a contest between the pit in his stomach and the enjoyment of the outside world, because he knows he can’t get lost in it, but he _wants_ to. He doesn’t want to forget her. He can’t say it to anyone else because for all that the Companions fight together, they don’t _talk_. But he wants to preserve everything, to the point of obsession, to the point of wanting to write down every memory and every hope and dream, because it’s _her_ and he doesn’t want to forget anything, anything at all.

He ends up making a list.

_favourite things:_

  * _Lex_



He makes another list.

_favourite things about Lex_

And he can’t think what to put, because everything about her is his favourite thing about her.

Shit.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s raining the day she comes back to him.

The sky has emptied out over the world and it runs in rivulets down the mountains, through the valleys, sweeping soil into mud and stray goats into herds that slip and slide down hillsides and cluster at the bottom, bleating, tripping over each other. This is the last thing Farkas sees, at least, before he goes into the Rorikstead inn. He’s got his armour on this time. He’s just come from decapitating a bear at Red Eagle Redoubt. The rain has lashed the blood from his hands and all the clarity from his mind. He sits down exhausted.

His hair drips down onto the table and into his bread. He focuses on chewing, on filling the hole in his stomach. He has a warm bed to get to. A night of well-deserved sleep. Maybe being somewhere as unfamiliar as this will keep the ghosts from his door.

It turns out, however, that as ghosts go, Lex’s is pretty smart. Hers can open them.

Farkas stares up at her. She’s similarly drenched. Her golden hair is flattened against her skull, and far from the warm sunshine he once likened her to, she now evokes the image of damp wheat. His heart tightens in his chest before expanding into something that runs to the tips of his fingers. She can’t look away from him, either. It must be a good sign. It must be.

Farkas is already thanking his gods when she says, ‘They told me you’d be here,’ in that breathless, High Rock voice and he’s gone. He doesn’t even feel himself stand up.

‘Farkas,’ she says, and then she’s coming forward and she’s in his arms. Her hands clench on the softer parts of his armour and, after a moment where he’s tender to the extreme, brushing her shoulders and only really keeping her against him rather than holding, loving, he lets go and squeezes, picks her up and swings her round – and he doesn’t care at all that anyone is looking.

* * *

 ‘I couldn’t,’ she says. ‘I thought I was stronger on my own but I’m not, I’m not. I’m so sorry, Farkas.’

‘I love you,’ he says, and she looks at him with those big blue eyes, swimming with tears and says, ‘I love you too.’

* * *

He gets a full night’s sleep, her body snug against his, their chests rising and falling together. Her hair dries, ticklish, against his bare shoulder, her warmth so comforting, so well-missed.

He wakes her in the morning by planting kisses over her face and down the column of her throat, featherlight and tender. Her pulse flutters beneath his lips as she wakes up and giggles, the sound reverberating through her chest and sending answering throbs through him. He pulls her close and kisses her mouth, deeply, his heart singing as she holds him tighter and runs her hands over his body. She’s so hungry for him and it puts a fever in his blood.

She keeps him as close as possible even as they undress, only stopping to let him pull his shirt off his head – he has to pause to shuck off his smalls and gasps when she touches him, seeing through half-lidded eyes the way her eyes darken with lust. She wraps her legs around him and guides him into her, the movement still juddering as they shake and tremble. He drops his head to her shoulder and groans, and she says, ‘No one else, no one but you.’

‘No one but you,’ he murmurs back, and thrusts, feeling her hips rise to meet him and her body clench around his, everywhere around him. Her ankles knock against his coccyx. He drives deep into her and she moans sharp and wanton. She pulls his head up to kiss him, and tangles her fingers in his hair. She tugs and sends sparks running down his back – drops back her head to moan. He raises his head to see the flush on her face, the beads of sweat as she twists to the side and hides in the pillow, and he growls.

It’s not long after that, not long at all, that she shakes around him, brought finally to completion by his controlled massage of her clit – and he pushes deep and comes, moaning into her ear so she shivers again, milking him.

He rolls off her and she puts her head on his chest, slinking her hand across his stomach and waist.

‘I’m the Dragonborn, Farkas,’ she murmurs. ‘That’s why I left. I didn’t want anyone to know.’

Through his post-orgasmic fog he feels wonder swell inside him. It’s the same way he feels looking up at Masser and Secunda on a clear night.

Of course it would be her. Lex. If it was going to be anyone, it would be her.

‘Sweetheart,’ he says. ‘What were you so afraid of?’

‘I can’t drag you in,’ she whispers. ‘I can’t see you get hurt.’

‘I can look after myself,’ he says. ‘You know what my job is?’

She shakes her head.

‘To look after you.’ And he kisses her forehead, thinking that later he’ll show her. But now she’s yawning against his midriff, and he lets it go, and falls with her back into sleep, back into love.

**Author's Note:**

> title, summary and skeleton taken from the Staves song 'No Me No You No More'.


End file.
